Depopulation

johan osterman · #1 September 25th, 2003, 11:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pocus:

quote:
Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Is there no one that have tried to wish for population?

It does work.

a bit too costly for a 100 gems cost.

a simple mechanism would be to have the growth scale give a *minimal* increase, whatever is the pop of the province. As of now, a depopulated province stay depopulated.

Also, why not tie pop growth to tax rate. You already have implemented that too much taxes reduce populations, so why not enabling the reverse (population migrate into the province, they dont have to be teleported magically!).

also the growth scale give roughly 0.15% increase each time (for an astonishing ~~ 0.5 % for growth +3). The doms I manual states that the growth rate is 0.5% for EACH scale. So, is the code buggy (anathem!) or is the manual wrong?

In dom 2 one turn is one month. If I recall correctly the growth is 1.001+(growth*0.002) maxing out at 1.007^12=1.087.. a year, almost 9% population growth a year. At growth 0 it will result in appr. 1.2% growth a year. 9% population growth a year is a pretty big whopping growth. The reason that taxes below the default does not increase population growth is that the 100% is considered the tax that is sustainable without impacting negatively on the population, more taxes will be detrimental to the health of population, but lower taxes will not have that much of a positive impact. There is no national health care plan in dominions but gift of health! Demand gift of health from your local pretender today!

[ September 25, 2003, 22:18: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Treebeard · #2 September 25th, 2003, 11:34 PM

Another idea: give the growth scale a fixed population increase, so with growth +3, per example, you'll have a growth of 30 or the percentual bonus, whichever is greater.

Bard of Prey · #3 September 26th, 2003, 12:19 AM

I like licker's idea (borrowed from MOO3) for the most part. At the least, a system of auto-migration would work very well for this game, IMHO. Residents of high-tax, high-unrest provinces would likely start moving out into neighbouring provinces with lower tax rates, or a nicer living environment (dominion scales could play a part here as well... people in a 3 point Death scale would be migrating in droves. Likewise, sitting next to a province with Order, Growth and Fortune scales all at 3, you would start to seriously consider moving to this 'paradise' province next door).

Overpopulation could be factored in as well (although, if there's an unrest effect for overpopulation, that would take care of it). In this way, the population of larger provinces would gradually spread out to nearby provinces with lots of empty space (thus, no crowding 100,000 people into your capitol). This would also encourage people to settle newly-conquered wastelands, as your dominion gradually improves conditions there... which seems to have been the original goal of this thread.

In particular, I like the idea that as your dominion spreads to enemy provinces you convert people in that province to your faith, who would then consider making a pilgrimage to lands where the 'true god' is worshipped. This adds even more depth the idea of waging war with the strength of your dominion (as it allows you to 'steal' an opponent's tax base).

All of the above effects would be automatic, and therefore require no micromanagement on the part of the player (a design goal I strongly agree with). With that system in place though, you could then add controls to allow players to influence the process, if you wanted. Some of the other ideas in this thread would be good for that (spending gold to 'encourage' people to migrate, using commanders to 'force' migration, and even using magic to teleport people from distant provinces).

Other things that are already in the game could be of use as well... patrolling troops might help prevent migration for example (on top of reducing the unrest that makes the people want to leave)... and players could manipulate their tax rates if they really wanted to 'push' population in a given direction (this is how the North American west was settled after all... with free homesteads and tax breaks offered to people willing to migrate).

Pocus · #4 September 28th, 2003, 08:49 AM

thanks for the precision Johan.

Aristoteles · #5 September 28th, 2003, 02:03 PM

So we will have spells/other options to repopulate provinces? I hope so. In my games, there are huge amount of dead provinces. Its very annoying.

Nerfix · #6 September 28th, 2003, 02:22 PM

Rigth. And you don't happen to play with players who think 3 Death is a good way to get more design points?

Psitticine · #7 September 28th, 2003, 11:18 PM

I do like that idea of automatic migration. High unrest + a Dominion that doesn't match the provincial owner = sudden relocation plan!

I'm not all that concerned about population growth; I just think it'd be an interesting dynamic to have going on. Possibly patrols could then serve another purpose: to stop the people from crossing the border into enemy territory!